


And we all move on

by RaiLockhart



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Slight Canon Divergence, Tension, Trapped In Elevator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-16
Updated: 2016-01-16
Packaged: 2018-05-14 05:04:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5730481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaiLockhart/pseuds/RaiLockhart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of the singularity in Central City, Barry and Iris start avoiding each other.</p><p>Until a few months later, when they stuck in an elevator together.</p><p>Slight canon divergence; written before season 2 premiered.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And we all move on

**Author's Note:**

> Previously posted on tumblr under journalistiriswest.

“Hold the door!”

She jams the close door button repeatedly with her thumb.

The doors start to close, and Iris holds her breath, counting down the seconds until she is safe. Six, five, four, three-

A hand curves around the metal and all of the air Iris had sucked in holds in her lungs and she prays that someone else had been yelling, that she is wrong. The doors spread apart, incredibly slowly, and Barry (pretending to huff and heave as though running from wherever he was to the elevator was a feat) stills on the other side, frozen in place. 

“I can just walk,” he mutters, the doors wide open, his mobile lab bag hanging off his shoulder. 

Iris sighs, already missing the breath of air that had started to hurt her lungs. “Don’t be silly,” she says, a little too loud; the first thing besides hi or bye that she says to him in months. He squints at her. “People are watching,” she whispers, and he steps onto the elevator without another complaint, letting the doors close (finally) behind him. 

He moves to the farthest point away from her, and she stands in the back corner, and they refuse to make eye contact. She doesn’t think that a thirty second elevator ride could be excruciating, but  _ god;  _ standing here with him, feet between them and yet closer than they’d been in  _ months _ , being able to hear him breathe and see him twitch and feel his eyes on her… She’s never been more uncomfortable, never been more aware of how every single second passed by them.

“I, uh,” he starts, and she glances out of the corner of her eye so she can see his mouth hanging open as he struggles with words. “I just wanted to, um,” he tries again.

She presses her lips into a tight line and counts down the seconds until she can race out of the elevator and be as far away from him as humanly possible - seven, six, five…

The elevator (having other plans, it seems) jolts, and Iris stumbles forward. Unconsciously (she hopes), Barry reaches out to her and steadies her, his palm warm against the fabric of her jacket. She twists quickly out of his grip, still unsure on her feet, and he is back in his corner before she even rights herself. 

The lights flicker (on and off and on and off) while the elevator whines for a few seconds, and she wants to protest right along with it as it settles. She wants to scream when it fully stops, quiet again, doors tightly shut. 

Instead, she just glares. 

“Oh, god,” Barry mumbles to himself, but she can still hear, and he slams his hands against the door. “Hey! Hey, is there someone out there? We’re stuck in here! Hello?”

He continues on for a few seconds, and Iris ignores him as he bangs and hits and yells. Instead, she pulls out her phone and calls her father, staring pointedly at her feet. “Iris,” her dad says after the second ring, “it’s not a good time, baby, something-”

“I’m stuck in the elevator,” she interrupts. Barry stops. “The elevator in the station.”

“Did it go out?” her father asks. The he sighs, long and frustrated even over the phone. “Of course it did. Look, baby girl, I’ll get someone here as soon as possible to get it open and get you out, but we have a situation downtown. Someone short circuited the power to a lot of government buildings and banks, and it’s caused panic. I need to get in contact with Barry so we can sort out what’s going on.”

“Dad,” she says.

“Do you have water? Is air blowing in there? Do you think you can hold on for an hour while we wait for the fire department to get out here?”

“Yeah,” she says. “but, dad, Barry is-”

“Probably down at STAR Labs with Cisco or something. I’ll call him. And Cisco might be able to come get you out first. As long as one of them is helping me out, I’m sure the other can come and get you.”

“No, he’s here with me,” she says, and she can feel Barry’s eyes on her. “Barry is in the elevator with me. And if you have a metahuman out there-”

The phone is torn from her fingers and Iris jumps back, electricity tingling the tips of her fingers. “Joe, what metahuman?” Barry says into the phone. “No… Look, I know. I get- no. If there’s a metahuman, Cisco needs to be out there with you. I can’t get out of here, and it will take too much time for him to come down and sort me out. You might lose the meta. Yeah. Yeah. No, she is with Ronnie. It’s just him.” He sighed. “We’ll be fine. Cisco can handle it. Just get someone down here as soon as you can. Yeah. Bye.”

Barry holds out her phone, and she stares at it for a few seconds before grabbing it from his hand. “Sorry for taking it,” he says quietly. “I heard you say metahuman and I panicked.”

She mumbles something that doesn’t even sound like a word to her own ears, and stares back down at her phone. She contemplates playing music or downloading some kind of game and just ignoring him for however long they are stuck together (for the rest of her life?, she wonders dully), but her phone is at 9% battery, and she doesn’t want to have it die in case her father tries to contact them. 

He shifts in his corner, and she backs away again into her own, slumping to the floor. She hears him follow suit, and sees the edges of his shoes (wearing converse with a very worn toe; she wonders if he ever runs in them).

“How is your new place?” he asks, finally, after minutes crawl by.

Iris shrugs, and moves her phone from one hand to another.

“Joe told me you live close enough that you can walk to work.” She nods again. “That’s cool. Useful, too.” 

Iris doesn’t say anything. 

She doesn’t even look at him.

She can hear him fidget, though, and can imagine how it looks: his fingers tapping against his leg or the floor, his head moving back and forth, his eyes always on her. 

“Look, Iris, I know things have been weird between us,” he starts, and for the first time in months, she choses to look at him directly.

“Don’t,” she says. 

He sighs. “Come on,” he says. “We’re here. We might as well talk about it, about everything that happened with-”

“Dad tells me that you’ve been spending a lot of time with his new partner,” she blurts out, and Barry’s eyes widen ever so slightly in surprise. “The new one,” she says, and he tilts his head to the side. “You know. Oh, god, I don’t even remember her name.”

She wants to look away, is the thing, but she can’t. Not when she is finally staring at him, finally seeing his face again, finally reading the emotions that are constantly written there. Guilt. Annoyance. Wonder. 

“You’re avoiding the subject,” he says. 

Iris bites her lip. “I’m not avoiding anything,” she says, sounding more harsh than she means. “I just don’t want to talk about this right now.”

He closes his eyes and she chooses to focus on his hands (big and pale and bony) running through his hair instead of his open mouth or the rise and fall of his chest. She spent enough time, when he was in a coma, looking at the rise and fall of his chest. “Well, we have to talk about it,” he replies. “And we’re here, right now, with no way out and no way to get out of it. It’s been five months, Iris, and you barely even look at me anymore.”

“I look at you,” she protests weakly.

“I don’t count it when you glance at me out of the corner of your eye when you think I’m not paying attention,” he says. “Or when you drop something off for Cisco and happen to see me on the computer screen.”

She stays silent. 

“Yeah,” he says, opening his eyes again. She still can’t look away from his face. “I know that you go over to STAR Labs and see Caitlin and Cisco when I’m not there. It’s not exactly a secret.”

Well, it was supposed to be. But she doesn’t say that, either. 

She finds his eyes, again, and they just stare at each other. Iris can’t tell whether or not time slows down or speeds up, or if he is as close to tears as she feels, but she doesn’t break their eye contact. “I just need to talk to you,” he says, so quietly she thinks maybe she imagined it. “Is that so much to ask?”

“No,” she says back. “No, I guess it’s not.”


End file.
